03 February 2019

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Albums and Singles

FEAN started as a musical artist-in-residence project in a little church in the Frysian village Katlyk. The group consists of Jan Kleefstra, Romke Kleefstra, Mariska Baars and Rutger Zuydervelt (Machinefabriek), who also form the quartet Piiptsjilling. For FEAN they are accompanied by Belgian guests Annelies Monseré, Sylvain Chauveau and Joachim Badenhorst.

The FEAN project gets its inspiration from the ecological decay of peatland in the Dutch province Friesland and in other parts of Europe. Agriculture and peat extraction are threatening the landscape severely and with long term consequences. This forms the underlying thought for the improvised recording sessions, which were overseen by Jan Switters.

Although the Piiptsjilling members are obviously used to performing and recording together, adding the three Belgian guests (who hadn't played together before) added an extra dimension to the group's dynamic, resulting in a concentrated yet playful series of improvisations, that were later mixed and edited for the FEAN album.

More information can be found here.

03 February 2019

Administrator

Albums and Singles

Pacific City Sound Visions greets wonder again, this fall, to bring you a third vinyl release from the late '80s/early '90s European experimental/industrial scene.  After Vox Populi!'s "Half Dead Ganja Music" and Frank Dommert's "Kiefermusic," we have a hand-picked compilation by the Hamburg artist MAAT.

MAAT is a solo project by Dörte Marth, who created two secretly powerful and underappreciated records in 1993. They were released on two labels (Dragnet, Dom Elchklang) run by Achim P. Li Khan, the co-founder of H.N.A.S.

MAAT'S musical palette is at once, strikingly, a more dark and brooding occult version of Anima and Limpe Fuchs. One can hear classical music references much like Coil's Unnatural History, but played further, blurring the shadowy lines between sampling and virtuoso playing.  MAAT'S dark and glisteningly illustrated use of electronic drums, Pan-Asian arrangements, and classical styles, invent a private world where she uncovers and projects forth, a new and ancient female energy.  It's almost as if she is orchestrating her palette and shooting it through star-clusters beneath the world.  Probably Typhonian Highlife and 4th World Magazine's greatest influence.

More information can be found here.

03 February 2019

Administrator

Albums and Singles

"I first met Lionel Marchetti in Australia during the Liquid Architecture Festival in 2010. Decibel were touring our Alvin Lucier program, and Lionel was on the same bill performing a live performance set manipulating electro-acoustic materials with dancer Yoko Higashi. I was so taken with Lionel's performances and the resulting music, that I asked him if he would write a piece for Decibel.

I didn’t realize that he hadn’t done something like this before. The first work was "Première étude (les ombres)," communicated as a text score, and premiered in 2012. I was asked by Lionel to make some recordings of ocarinas, harmonicas, and folk instruments – and I sent these to him for the creation of a 'partition concrète d'accompagnement'– a fixed media part that is featured in the live performance. For this piece, the part comes from speakers beside each performer, and a bass amplifier beneath the piano. Like his own performances I had seen the year before, the work was naturally performative – with unique speaker and performer configurations, interesting and odd additional instruments. It was such a rich work, a remarkable combination of electronic, spatial, acoustic and textural music. The performers use the partition concrete as a score.

I visited Lionel in Lyon, France in 2014, recording flute improvisations in his studio. He used these as a basis for "Une série de reflets," again communicating via text instructions and each performer having their own dedicated speaker to interact with. "Pour un enfant qui dort," which again requested flute sounds that were this time part of the live performance as well as the partition concrète, was also written around that time. The next work saw a more 'compositional' collaboration - "The Earth defeats me" began as a graphically scored work written by me and recorded by Decibel in the studio. That recording was used to make the partition concrète which is now an embedded as part of the animated score file, thanks to the software we had developed to do so.

These works exist as live performances, but also as singular concrète works, when heard without the instruments. Working with Lionel has been remarkable: he has a singular way of thinking about sound and its relationship to works and images. Music concrete is a lifestyle for him, it is a way of thinking, communicating and being. These pieces enable the acoustic instruments to be part of that – extending the ideas in the partition concrete, using them structurally and texturally, as well as being part of them.

When I first met Lionel, I didn’t realize he was in Australia because it was originally planned he would be travelling with French composer Éliane Radigue, performing some of her electroacoustic works, as her preferred diffuser. I would commission a work for Decibel from Élaine ("Occam Hexa II") in 2014 and it was during that process I realized the link between them. Decibel performed Lionel and Eliane's music together – it is music that concerns itself with the incredible power of sound, but from the most delicate and dream like perspective."

-Cat Hope

More information can be found here.

03 February 2019

Administrator

Albums and Singles

"As I’ve tried to understand what is happening now without judgement––a collapse of systems, boundaries, and symbols that crumble faster with each forcible attempt to reinstate them––I am finding equal failure in streamlined, singular methodologies for both comprehension and composition. Outside, reason and rationale wane in heft and clarity. Representation in a world that refuses fact is uncertain and deceptive. Time is complicated by the failure of the linear. Inside, what we see is not what we hear, what we hear is not what we think, what we think is not what we feel, and so on.

The dread incited by this precarity is difficult to interpret without announcing failure: the anxiety of watching our own hourglass is palpable and demanding. I feel existence in this moment has required a move away from my own humanity in order to simply live in it, live through it, live with it while refusing to release the idea of environmental recovery. It is to request your humanity to unwillingly shift, to mutate toward something sharply resilient and relentless. The sounds on this record embody this sense of mutant consciousness. It is, for me, a representation of a vigorous sprint towards complexity, towards the interdependencies that serve as stop-gaps, towards freaky, slippery, compounded stacks of reality.

The title, A Parallel Array of Horses, is derived from a geologic phenomenon in which a block of a specific type of rock has been completely separated by mineral veins from its counterpart within another body of rock, and then stacked upon multiples of others like it. Sounds on this record are both recorded and produced: the album opens with recordings of a Mojave wind storm and closes with the world’s largest colony of Mexican free-tailed bats departing their cave to roam the summer night air of Southeast Texas. Both scenes are landscapes of precarity, politically or meteorologically or otherwise. Interspersed are a variety of electronic instruments and processes, and compositional techniques that are variously clear-cut or intentionally buried by digital processing. Tracks three and four are composed entirely with my own voice––my own body as the original playback mechanism for experiencing the world, but manipulated, elaborated upon, and layered to express a more complex interpretation of that subjective reality.

Through listening, I find myself able to retrace my steps back to a sense of decentered, porous presence––the present is still here, with all of its shifts and confusion and valuable interdependencies. No matter is created or destroyed, only new forms arise."

>-Geneva Skeen

More information can be found here.

02 February 2019

Administrator

Albums and Singles

Thanks again to everyone who participated in the Recount of the 1999 Annual Brainwashed Readers Poll.

The original vote which took place at the end of 1999 was clearly less expansive and inclusive, however the new top picks aren't drastically different than the original vote for the most part. Numerous releases which have now charted weren't even on the radar of most readers at the time while other releases have noticeably dropped in popularity due to changing times and changing opinions.

No more polls until the end of 2019.

Album of the Year

1. Coil, ""Musick to Play in the Dark volume 1"" (Chalice)
2. Nurse With Wound, ""An Awkward Pause"" (United Dairies)
3. Labradford, ""E Luxo So"" (Kranky)
4. The Angels of Light, ""New Mother"" (Young God)
5. Low, ""Secret Name"" (Kranky)
6. Coil, ""Astral Disaster"" (Acme/Prescription)
7. Trans Am, ""Futureworld"" (Thrill Jockey)
8. Pan Sonic, ""A"" (Mute)
9. Mogwai, ""Come on Die Young"" (Chemikal Underground)
10. Add N to (X), ""Avant Hard"" (Mute)
11. Stars Of The Lid, ""Avec Laudenum"" (Sub Rosa)
12. Sigur Rós, ""Ágætis Byrjun"" (Smekkleysa)
13. Current 93 / Michael Cashmore / Christoph Heemann, ""Untitled"" (Durtro)
14. Jim O'Rourke, ""Eureka"" (Drag City)
15. Dome, ""Yclept"" (WMO)
16. Al Jabr (Richard H. Kirk), ""One Million and Three"" (Alphaphone)
17. Andrea Parker, ""Kiss My Arp"" (Mo Wax)
18. Pan•American, ""360 business/360 bypass"" (Kranky)
19. Stereolab, ""Cobra and Phases Group Play ""Voltage"" in the Milky Night"" (Duophonic)
20. Porter Ricks / Techno Animal, ""Symbiotics"" (Force Inc)
21. The Magnetic Fields, ""69 Love Songs"" (Merge)
22. People Like Us, ""Hate People Like Us"" (Staalplaat)
23. Godflesh, ""Us and Them"" (Earache)
24. Mouse On Mars, ""Niun Niggung"" (Sonig)
25. To Rococo Rot, ""The Amateur View"" (City Slang)
26. Monolake, ""Interstate"" (Imbalance Computer Music)
27. Four Tet, ""Dialogue"" (Output)
28. Bonnie ""Prince"" Billy, ""I See a Darkness"" (Palace)
29. Nightmares on Wax, ""Carboot Soul"" (Warp)
30. Arvo Pärt, ""Alina"" (ECM)
31. The Caretaker, ""Selected Memories from the Haunted Ballroom"" (V/Vm Test Records)
32. Tactile, ""Borderlands"" (Sentrax)
33. µ-Ziq, ""Royal Astronomy"" (Astralwerks)
34. GusGus, ""This is Normal"" (4AD)
35. Mirror, ""Eye Of The Storm"" (Streamline)
36. Surgeon, ""Force & Form"" (Tresor)
37. The Necks, ""Hanging Gardens"" (ReR Megacorp)
38. Papa M, ""Live from a Shark Cage"" (Drag City)
39. Matmos, ""The West"" (Deluxe)
40. Plateau, ""Space Cake"" (Subconscious)
41. Songs: Ohia, ""Axxes & Ace"" (Secretly Canadian)
42. Chris & Cosey, ""Union"" (Conspiracy International)
43. Faust, ""Ravvivando"" (Klangbad)
44. Hox, ""It-Ness"" (Origin)
45. Bill Laswell, ""Hashisheen : The End Of Law"" (Sub Rosa)
46. The Cinematic Orchestra, ""Motion"" (Ninja Tune)
47. Rachel's, ""Selenography"" (Quarterstick)
48. Chris Carter, ""Small Moon"" (Conspiracy International)
49. Hood, ""The Cycle of Days and Seasons"" (Domino)
50. Volcano the Bear, ""The Inhazer Decline"" (United Dairies)
51. Jessica Bailiff, ""Hour of the Trace"" (Kranky)
52. Aranos, ""Every Bright Body Gleams Green"" (Noise Museum)
53. Tangerine Dream, ""Mars Polaris"" (TDI Music)
54. Six Organs Of Admittance, ""Six Organs Of Admittance"" (Pavillion)
55. Six Organs Of Admittance, ""Dust & Chimes"" (Pavillion)
56. Andrew Chalk, ""Over the Edges"" (Streamline)
57. Fly Pan Am, ""Fly Pan Am"" (Constellation)
58. Tarentel, ""From Bone To Satellite"" (Temporary Residence)
59. Pantaleimon, ""Trees Hold Time"" (Durtro)
60. Acid Mothers Temple & The Melting Paraiso U.F.O., ""Pataphisical Freak Out Mu!!"" (P.S.F.)
61. Interzone Orchestra, ""Programmed"" (Planet E)
62. Irr.App.(Ext.), ""Foreign Matter, Nor Frequency Carrier"" (Errata in Exelsius)
63. Twilight Circus Dub Sound System, ""Horsie"" (M)
64. Pole, ""2"" (Matador)
65. Cyclobe, ""Luminous Darkness"" (Phantom Code)
66. Volcano the Bear, ""Yak Folks Y'Are"" (Pickled Egg)
67. Peace Orchestra, ""Peace Orchestra"" (G-Stone)
68. Hallucinator, ""Landlocked"" (Chain Reaction)
69. Omni Trio, ""Byte Size Life"" (Moving Shadow)
70. Peter Benisch, ""Waiting For Snow"" (Fax +49-69/450464)
71. The Necks, ""Hanging Gardens"" (Fish Of Milk)
72. Thomas P. Heckmann, ""Raum"" (Mille Plateaux)
73. Plaid, ""Rest Proof Clockwork"" (Warp)
74. The Sun Ra Arkestra, ""A Song For The Sun"" (El Ra)
75. Z'EV, ""Face the Wound"" (Soleilmoon)
76. DJ Shadow & Cut Chemist, ""Brainfreeze"" (Sixty7)
77. Tom Waits, ""Mule Variations"" (Anti-)
78. Señor Coconut Y Su Conjunto, ""El Baile Alemán"" (Emperor Norton)
79. Aranos, ""Making Love In Small Spaces"" (Pieros)
80. Mika Vainio, ""Ydin"" (Wavetrap)
81. Bass Communion v Muslimgauze, ""Bass Communion V Muslimgauze"" (Soleilmoon)
82. Lobe, ""Hibernation"" (Swim)
83. Sneakster, ""Pseudo-Nouveau"" (Bella Union)
84. The Hope Blister, ""Underarms"" (4AD)
85. Bill Laswell, ""Invisible Design"" (Tzadik)
86. Mirror, ""Ringstones"" (Some Fine Legacy)
87. The Black Heart Procession, ""2"" (Touch & Go)
88. Songs: Ohia, ""The Ghost"" (Secretly Canadian)
89. Headcase, ""Mushiness"" (The Music Cartel)
90. Death In June, ""Operation Hummingbird"" (New European Recordings)
91. Volcano the Bear, ""Volwheat"" (Volucan)
92. Piano Magic, ""Low Birth Weight"" (Rocket Girl)
93. Sam Prekop, ""Sam Prekop"" (Thrill Jockey)
94. Squarepusher, ""Selection Sixteen"" (Warp)
95. Bauhaus, ""Gotham"" (Metropolis)
96. Irr.App.(Ext.), ""Their Little Bones..."" (Errata in Exelsius)
97. Jimmy Scott, ""Holding Back the Years"" (Artists Only!)
98. Ku-Ling Bros, ""Creach"" (Off World Sounds)
99. Fennesz, ""plus forty seven degrees 56' 37"" minus sixteen degrees 51' 08"""" (Touch)
100. Ghost, ""Tune In, Turn On, Free Tibet"" (Drag City)

 

Single of the Year

1. Coil, ""Winter Solstice: North"" (Eskaton)
2. Aphex Twin, ""Windowlicker"" (Warp)
3. Elph, ""Zwölf"" (Noton)
4. Autechre, ""EP7"" (Warp)
5. Boards of Canada, ""Peel Session"" (Warp)
6. Mogwai, ""EP"" (Chemikal Underground)
7. godspeed you black emperor!, ""slow riot for the new zero kanada"" (Kranky)
8. Pan Sonic, ""B"" (Mute)
9. The Angels of Light, ""Praise Your Name"" (Young God)
10. Add N to (X), ""Metal Fingers in My Body"" (Mute)
11. Co–Ω, ""Vox Tinnitus"" (Raster-Noton)
12. Sigur Rós, ""Svefn-G-Englar"" (Fatcat)
13. Einstürzende Neubauten, ""Total Eclipse of the Sun"" (Mute)
14. Jim O'Rourke, ""Halfway to a Threeway"" (Drag City)
15. GusGus, ""Ladyshave"" (4AD)
16. Tino, ""Tino's Breaks Volume 3: Christmas"" (Tino Corp)
17. Tino, ""Tino's Breaks Volume 4: Mambo"" (Tino Corp)
18. Four Tet, ""Glasshead/Calamine"" (Output)
19. Add N to (X), ""Revenge of the Black Regent"" (Mute)
20. Low, ""Christmas"" (Chairkickers' Music)
21. Broadcast, ""Echo's Answer"" (Warp)
22. CoH, ""Into Memories Of S-Tone. For Gavin Bryars"" (Noton)
23. Squarepusher, ""Budakhan Mindphone"" (Warp)
24. Squarepusher, ""Maximum Priest"" (Warp)
25. To Rococo Rot, ""Cars"" (City Slang)
26. GusGus, ""Starlovers"" (4AD)
27. Stereolab, ""The Free Design"" (Duophonic)
28. Stereolab, ""The Underground Is Coming"" (Duophonic)
29. Richard H. Kirk, ""Darkness at Noon"" (Touch)
30. Four Tet, ""Misnomer"" (Output)
31. Mouse On Mars, ""Distroia"" (Sonig)
32. Komet, ""Manhatten"" (Noton)
33. Low, ""Immune / I Remember"" (Tugboat)
34. Mouse On Mars, ""Diskdusk"" (Sonig)
35. To Rococo Rot, ""Telema"" (City Slang)
36. Ladytron, ""He Took Her To a Movie"" (Invicta Hi-Fi)
37. GusGus, ""VIP"" (4AD)
38. The Black Dog, ""Peel Session"" (Warp)
39. Current 93, ""Misery Farm"" (Durtro)
40. Ladytron, ""Miss Black And Her Friends"" (Bambini)
41. Monolake, ""Gobi. The Desert"" (Imbalance Computer Music)
42. Mr. Oizo, ""Flat Beat"" (F Communications)
43. Andrea Parker, ""The Unknown"" (Mo Wax)
44. Natacha Atlas, ""One Brief Moment"" (Mantra)
45. Nightmares on Wax, ""Finer"" (Warp)
46. Papa M, ""Up North Kids No. 2/She Said Yes"" (Acetone)
47. Papa M, ""Travels In Constants (Vol. 5)"" (Temporary Residence)
48. Ice, ""Wrapped In Three Dimensions"" (Morpheus)
49. Pan•American, ""Quarry"" ((K-RAA-K)³)
50. Edward Ka-Spel, ""Share the Day / Dream Stealer"" (Brainwashed)

 

Vault/Reissue of the Year

1. Swans, ""Various Failures 1988-1992"" (Young God)
2. Swans, ""Cop/Young Good/Greed/Holy Money"" (Thirsty Ear)
3. Swans, ""Public Castration is a Good Idea"" (Thirsty Ear)
4. Cocteau Twins, ""BBC Sessions"" (Bella Union)
5. Mimir, ""Mimyriad"" (Streamline)
6. Dif Juz, ""Soundpool"" (4AD)
7. Skinny Puppy, ""The Singles Collect"" (Nettwerk)
8. Skinny Puppy, ""The B Sides Collect"" (Nettwerk)
9. Scorn, ""Anamnesis"" (Invisible)
10. Pan Sonic, ""X"" (Mute)
11. The Legendary Pink Dots, ""Live at the Metro"" (SPV)
12. The Legendary Pink Dots, ""–ü–æ–π –ü–æ–∫–∞ –ú–æ–∂–µ—à—å"" (Brudenia)
13. Current 93, ""Calling for Vanished Faces"" (Durtro)
14. Current 93, ""All Dolled Up Like Christ"" (Durtro)
15. Can, ""Music (Live 1971-1977)"" (Spoon)
16. Stereolab, ""Switched On"" (Too Pure)
17. 808 State, ""Newbuild"" (Rephlex)
18. The Birthday Party, ""Live 81-82"" (4AD)
19. Psychic TV, ""Best Ov: Time's Up"" (Cleopatra)
20. Dopplereffekt, ""Gesamtkunstwerk"" (International Deejay Gigolo)
21. Pere Ubu, ""Dub Housing"" (Thirsty Ear)
22. Talk Talk, ""London 1986"" (Pond Life)
23. Fluxion, ""Vibrant Forms"" (Chain Reaction)
24. Psyche, ""Insomnia Theatre"" (Synthetic Symphony)
25. Swell Maps, ""International Rescue"" (Alive Records)
26. Xhol, ""Motherfuckers GmbH & Co KG"" (Ohr)
27. Guru Guru, ""Hinten"" (Ohr)
28. Lisa Germano, ""Happiness"" (4AD)
29. Psychic TV, """"Origin Of The Species"" Volume Too! A Second Supply Of Two Tablets Of Acid"" (Invisible)
30. The Moon Lay Hidden Beneath A Cloud, ""Rest On Your Arms Reversed"" (Arthur's Round Table)
31. Pere Ubu, ""New Picnic Time"" (Thirsty Ear)
32. Lisa Germano, ""Excerpts from a Love Circus and Small Heads E.P."" (4AD)
33. Andreas Martin & Christoph Heemann, ""Lebenserinnerungen Eines Lepidopterologen"" (Robot)
34. Biosphere, ""Biosystems - The Biosphere Remixes"" (Beatservice Records)
35. Lustmord, ""The Monsterous Soul"" (Soleilmoon)
36. DNA Le Draw D-Kee, ""DNA Le Draw D-Kee"" (Soleilmoon)
37. Annexus Quam, ""Osmose"" (Ohr)
38. Roy Montgomery, ""324 E. 13th Street #7"" (Drunken Fish)
39. Tarwater, ""Silur"" (Mute)
40. Quoit, ""Lounge"" (Invisible)
41. The Sound, ""Propaganda"" (Renascent)
42. Crispy Ambulance, ""The Plateau Phase"" (LTM)
43. Gila, ""Night Works"" (Garden Of Delights)
44. Sergius Golowin, ""Lord Krishna Von Goloka"" (Ohr)
45. Anima-Sound, ""Musik Für Alle"" (Alga Marghen)
46. A Minor Forest, ""So, They Were in Some Sort of Fight?"" (My Pal God)
47. His Name Is Alive, ""Always Stay Sweet"" (4AD)
48. Kammerflimmer Kollektief, ""Incommunicado"" (Temporary Residence)
49. Red House Painters, ""Retrospective"" (4AD)
50. Black Tambourine, ""Complete Recordings"" (Slumberland)

 

Various Artist Compilation of the Year

1. ""Warp10+1 Influences"" (Warp)
2. ""The Swinging Reflective - Favourite Moments of Mutual Ecstasy"" (United Dairies)
3. ""Splendor - Original Motion Picture Soundtrack"" (Astralwerks)
4. ""Warp10+2 Classics 89-92"" (Warp)
5. ""AuralOffalWaffleTenPintsOfBitterAndABagOfPorkScratchings"" (V/Vm Test Records)
6. ""Total 1"" (Kompakt)
7. ""Warp10+3 Remixes"" (Warp)
8. ""Points In Time 001"" (Good Looking Records)
9. ""Points In Time 002"" (Good Looking Records)
10. ""Points In Time 003"" (Good Looking Records)
11. ""From Brussels With Love"" (Les Disques Du Crépuscule)
12. ""π: Music For The Motion Picture"" (Silva Screen)
13. ""The Ghost Orchid: An Introduction to EVP"" (Ash International)
14. ""Sub Rosa vs. Kompakt"" (Sub Rosa)
15. ""Shanti Projet Collection"" (Badman Recording Co.)
16. ""Four Ways Of Saying H‚ÇÉO"" (Hushush)
17. ""Time : Space"" (Transmat)
18. ""End ID"" (Digital Narcis)
19. ""The Final Solstice"" (Piski Disk)
20. ""X-Ray Music: A Blood And Fire Dub Directory"" (Blood & Fire)
21. ""Ischemic Folks"" (Schematic)
22. ""Tonal Evicence 1999"" (Mute)
23. ""Rude Mechanic"" (PIano)
24. ""Modulation & Transformation 4"" (Mille Plateaux)
25. ""Adrian Sherwood Presents The Master Recordings Volume 2"" (On U)

Boxed Set of the Year

1. The Creatures, ""Zulu"" (Sioux)
2. Can, ""Box"" (Spoon)
3. Robert Wyatt, ""EPs"" (Hannibal)
4. [V/A], ""On-U Sound Box"" (Cleopatra)
5. Muslimgauze, ""Box of Silk and Dogs"" (Staalplaat)

 

Artist of the Year

1. Coil
2. Add N to (X)
3. Current 93
4. Pan Sonic
5. GusGus
6. Stereolab
7. The Angels of Light
8. Low
9. Four Tet
10. Mogwai

 

Label of the Year

1. Warp
2. Mute
3. 4AD
4. Kranky
5. Young God
6. Drag City
7. Raster-Noton
8. Durtro
9. United Dairies
10. Soleilmoon

 

Worst Album of the Year

1. VNV Nation, ""Praise the Fallen"" (TVT)
2. Pita, ""Get Out"" (Mego)
3. Buckethead, ""Monsters and Robots"" (CyberOctave)
4. Ovuca, ""Lactavent"" (Rephlex)
5. Alec Empire, ""Miss Black America"" (Digital Hardcore)
6. Plone, ""For Beginner Piano"" (Warp)
7. Skylab, ""#2 (Large As Life And Twice As Natural)"" (Eye Q)
8. The Church, ""A Box of Birds"" (Cooking Vinyl)
9. B. Fleischmann, ""Pop Loops For Breakfast"" (Morr Music)
10. The Rapture, ""Mirror"" (Gravity)

27 January 2019

Administrator

Albums and Singles

It took more than just some time and imagination to believe that Carte Blanche, this piece of astonishing contemporary music by some of the most talented and able musicians of the international avant-circuit, could be realized. Karkhana, a highly explosive mostly Middle Eastern/Mediterranean ensemble -- Sam Shalabi (Land Of Kush, Shalabi Effect, Dwarfs Of East Agouza), Sharif Sehnaoui ("A" Trio), Michael Zerang (Peter Brötzmann, Hamid Drake, Jaap Blonk, Vandermark, etc.), Mazen Kerbaj ("A" Trio), Maurice Louca (Dwarfs Of East Agouza), Tony Elieh, Umut Caglar (Konstrukt) -- is weaving a tapestry of sound for Egyptian songstress Nadah El Shazly's voice to slide deep into. On the other side, two grand seigneurs of underground, ex-Sun City Girls and Rangda guitar whirlwind Richard Bishop and W. David Oliphant (Maybe Mental) play it loud. Far Eastern post-industrial. Very heavy, sharp, and crystal clear. Ripe. Carte Blanche will be released as a one-time pressing. It is released as a part of Unrock's Saraswati Series. Vinyl cut by Peter Koerfer at Ivory Tower. Extra-heavy deluxe cover, printed cardboard insert. 140 gram vinyl.

more information here

27 January 2019

Administrator

Albums and Singles

Hot on the heels of the seismic sine-wave experimentation of Front Variations, this pair of EPs rounds out Richard Skelton's prolific winter with a welcome return to more familiar territory. Both intended as accompaniments to his most recent book of poetry (Dark Hollow Dark), the two releases take differing themes as inspiration, but both paths ultimately lead to strong, slow-burning drone pieces. Of the two, the darker and more primal Another Hand is the more powerful and fully realized work. Together, the releases complement each other beautifully to form an extremely satisfying and haunting diptych.

Aeolian

It is difficult to imagine a Richard Skelton release these days that does not have a thoughtful conceptual inspiration rooted in either arcane antiquarianism or regional geologic history.In this case, Another Hand is explicitly indebted to the former, though it is not a great leap to see how Skelton's fascination with latter might lead to the same place.More specifically, this EP blossomed forth from a notation in the only extant original manuscript of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.The notation addresses a word that is "rewritten, over stain, in another hand … in darker ink over another letter."That unintentionally evocative series of words became something of a guiding force for Skelton as he worked on the piece, triggering some deep reflection on how our own stories may be overwritten by "unknown - and possibly supernatural - agencies."That phrase also inspired the artwork within Dark Hollow Dark, as Skelton wrote over handwritten texts from a previous book (The Look Away), erasing their original meaning and transforming them into a dense and enigmatic tapestry of layered symbols.

Such a process of accretion obviously mirrors the changing landscapes of the earth and provides a winning template for making great drone music, provided the artist has a good ear for loop architecture and an even better intuition for pacing.Skelton has both, of course, and employs those talents to wonderful effect on this twenty-four-minute piece.Opening with just a simple foundation of deep, repeating throbs, "Another Hand" quietly blossoms into a melancholy dream-spell of layered and undulating string drones.It steadily accumulates further mass and texture as it unfolds, which is enough to make it a solid example of standard Skelton drone fare if that was all it offered.Happily, however, he had considerably more compelling plans, as the drones gradually start to become subsumed by a ghostly repeating howl around the piece's halfway point.That is the piece's only real transformation, but the half-grinding/half-spectral beauty of the new motif is more than enough to make "Another Hand" a wonderfully heavy and visceral piece.Characteristically, Skelton stays true to his thematic conceit to the very end, as the coda that remains after all the howling fades away feels like a newly bell-like resurrection of the opening motif.Perfect symmetry.

A Great Body Rising and Falling also has some literary roots beyond its ties to Dark Hollow Dark, though they are a bit more modest this time around.Rather than looking to an ancient manuscript from the collection of Sir Robert Bruce Cotton, Skelton finds inspiration in his own words–specifically a passage from The Look Away.It is a somewhat lengthy passage, but the crux is "…even then I feel movement.Not the dull workings of my body, but something greater.It is another body, massive and restless, shifting beneath me."The greater "something" in the original quote refers specifically to the hidden and not-so-hidden movements within the streams and hills that surrounded Skelton at the time, but it is certainly evocative and poetic to contemplate even deeper and more unknown forces at work.Naturally, Skelton does exactly that here, using the piece to abstractly explore the possibility of "sentience within the apparently inanimate."

27 January 2019

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Albums and Singles

It recently occurred to me that Phill Niblock has a remarkably meager discography for a visionary composer with a body of work that spans five decades. I hesitate to describe anyone's career as undocumented these days, as the experimental music world is drowning in live recordings, unfortunate one-off collaborations, vault scrapings, and unnecessary reissues. Nevertheless, Music for Cello makes a strong case that Niblock probably has quite a backlog of unheard masterpieces wrongfully gathering dust somewhere, as the three pieces compiled here all date back roughly forty years (or more). However, they all sound like they could have been recorded this week. While these pieces chronologically represent quite an early stage of Niblock's lifelong fascination with sustained acoustic tones and the interplay of frequencies, his mastery of the form was already amply evident. In fact, Music For Cello is actually superior to some albums from Niblock's classic run of Touch releases. I am delighted that I finally got to hear it.

Important

As some more alert readers may already suspect at this point, Music for Cello consists entirely of cello pieces.In fact, all three were performed by the same cellist (David Gibson) despite a twenty-one-year gap between the earliest recordings and the most recent.The three compositions are presented in chronological order, so the album opens with 1972's "3 to 7 – 196," a work that Niblock notes was his first to feature extremely precise tuning (a sine wave oscillator and frequency counter were used to tune Gibson's cello to exact frequencies).Niblock also notes that the piece is intended to be played at a high volume, as that intensity makes the overtone patterns more prominent.In more practical terms, "3 to 7 – 196" employs a steadily snowballing mass of uncomfortably harmonizing cello drones to weave something that resembles a nightmarishly buzzing swarm of harrowing dissonances.It is quite a tour de force of exquisite discomfort, as the gnarled and oscillating death cloud beautifully ebbs and flows and changes shape as various tones are added and subtracted.Also, it is heavy as hell.

Niblock and Gibson gamely keep the visceral discomfort party going with 1978's "Descent Plus," which presumably earned the "plus" because the duo revisited the piece in 1995 to add several more layers.Like its predecessor, "Descent" is a manifestation of some deep thinking about how frequencies interact and collide.In this case, Gibson played "four cello tones descending one octave over twenty-two minutes, from 300 hertz to 150 hertz," a feat achieved by sloooowly detuning his instrument "without lifting his bow from the strings."The later recordings added several additional drones that did NOT move, giving the glacially plunging tones a static foundation to uncomfortably harmonize with.Unsurprisingly, the piece is another feast of escalating darkness and discomfort, though it is much more of a slow-burner than the previous demonic storm of malevolent buzzing.Instead, "Descent" sounds like a score to a horror film or thriller in which the composer subtly adds some dissonant harmonies to imbue a quiet scene with an ominous sense of tension…then mercilessly continues to ratchet up that tension for the next twenty minutes with little hint of relief or resolution.

That said, the album closes with an unexpectedly lovely departure from its long stretch of roiling dissonance, revealing that the young Phill Niblock did not quite spend ALL of his time dreaming up ingenious new ways to weave slow-motion clouds of billowing horror (just most of it).Naturally, "Summing II" (one section of a larger, mostly unreleased four-part work) has some frequency experimentation at its core, but the essence is that Gibson's drones gradually build into an increasingly rich and immense chord over the course of thirty minutes.I suspect that the album art (portraying a brilliant sunrise) was directly inspired by "Summing," as the piece is a perfect evocation of a fiery orb slowly rising above a dark horizon to burn away the clouds and bathe the landscape in light and warmth.It is also a perfect end to the album, erasing all of the previous tension as it builds into a benevolent, all-engulfing roar.Of the three pieces, I am most enamored of the ugliest and most viscerally intense one ("3 to 7 – 196"), yet all the compositions improbably combine to form a beautifully crafted and coherent triptych (despite their varied origins and the fact that they were presumably never intended to be presented together).Obviously, Niblock continued to hone his artistry and recorded a handful of legitimate drone masterpieces in the decades since these pieces were recorded, but the organic tone of the cello, the elegant simplicity of the compositions, and the physical/raw production of these performances add up to a timeless work that ranks among Niblock's best.Which it absolutely should be, given that Niblock patiently waited more than four decades for all of these various threads to finally come together just right.

Samples:

• 3 to 7 - 196
• Descent Plus
• Summing II

 

27 January 2019

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Albums and Singles

I have mixed feelings about vinyl-only reissues, but there is no denying that they are an extremely effective way to rekindle interest in a long-neglected album that should not be languishing in obscurity. This album is an excellent example of that phenomenon, as Geelriandre/Arthesis has been fairly easy to track down digitally for a while and few were clamoring for it. Now that it is getting a formal physical resurrection, however, it is deservedly back in the public consciousness. As far as Radigue albums go, it is a somewhat unique one, occupying a grey area between the more divergent Alga Marghen albums and her more universally revered drone epics. It shares much more common ground with the latter, but it sometimes feels like an embryonic version that is still partially indebted to the avant-garde zeitgeist of the era. Nevertheless, it is quite a fascinating album, taking an alternate and almost sci-fi-damaged path quite unlike the pure and focused vision of Radigue's later recordings.

Important

Eliane Radigue's discography is quite a uniquely confounding chronological mess, as it took an unforgivably long time for the world to recognize her as one of the twentieth century's most singular and gifted composers.That is admittedly true of many other female composers as well, but Radigue has been more prolific than many of her peers.To give an especially damning example, her landmark Adnos trilogy was completed in the early '80s, yet only managed to get released in 2002.While it is not quite on the same level as that opus, Geelriandre/Arthesis also languished unheard for decades, as these two pieces date from the early '70s and only surfaced in 2003 on the Italian Fringes label (it was then reissued roughly a decade later on another Italian label, Senufo).Amusingly, it also just got released again as part of INA-GRM's Electronic Works boxed set, but this reissue is still its first physical release in the US.Interestingly, the earlier of the two pieces ("Geelriandre," recorded in 1972) was composed for the Arp 2500 synthesizer, which soon became Radigue's signature instrument.Apparently, not immediately though, as 1973's "Arthesis" was composed for a Moog synth at the University of Iowa.I would not have expected a visionary Parisian electronic music composer to turn up in Iowa in the early 1970s.I may need to completely reevaluate that state.

I was a bit surprised to discover that "Geelriandre" predates Radigue's deep, lifelong devotion to Buddhism, as its lingering, bell-like tones imbue the piece with a very ritualistic and "Eastern" feel.Or possibly a feel more like a lonely buoy, hollowly chiming in a windswept bay in the dead of night.In either case, it is quite an evocative sound and I am curious about its source, as it has a distinctly "metallic" timbre, and there is no mention of bells or gongs being involved in the performance.Notably, however, "Geelriandre" is a rare duet for Radigue, as it was composed for Gérard Frémy, who accompanies her on prepared piano (likely the source of the bell tones, though they seem improbably deep and sustained at times).The beauty of the composition primarily lies in the fact that it does not feel like a composition at all. Rather it feels like a field recording of a strange and dreamlike ceremony where ancient gongs reverberate in a quietly oscillating, machine-like hum, evoking a time-stretched recording of a Buddhist mass on an abandoned space station. The following "Arthesis" further deepens that sense of haunted otherworldliness, as the pulsating and ghostly minimalist thrum of Radigue's drones partially hides a host of ominous-sounding subterranean groans and scrapes.Again, an empty space station feels like an incredibly apt comparison, but now it feels like there is some massive, unknown creature slowly making its way through the air ducts, announcing its terrifying progress with sounds of distantly shuddering and warping metal.

Despite being a fairly devout fan of Radigue's work, I was a bit slow to fully appreciate this unique and quietly wonderful pair of structurally and temporally ambiguous drone works.I suspect my initial lukewarm reaction was because Geelriandre/Arthesis conspicuously lacks much of what I love about Radigue's major works: elegant, perfect simplicity and gradual, sublime transformation.Both traits are admittedly present on this album to some degree, but they are not the focus, and neither piece feels like it has a deliberate arc or evolution.As a result, I mistook Geelriandre/Arthesis for a primitive version of Radigue's later work until it slowly dawned on me that it was instead a highly evolved version of something else altogether.That is what makes this an important album, as it captures a rare moment when Radigue turned her formidable talents towards texture and mood, as if she was masterfully portraying a single scene in great detail rather than embarking on a transcendent abstract journey.Also, it helps that the two scenes Radigue paints are so alien and weirdly beautiful, as if she was trying to capture the elusive and fragmented dreams of an android.That certainly is not the expected territory for an Eliane Radigue album and partially explains why these recordings languished unheard for so long: these two strange visions were presumably both too far ahead of their time and radically outside of time to be fully appreciated in their own era.

27 January 2019

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Albums and Singles

Over the last several years, Marc Richter's Black to Comm project has swelled considerably in ambition and scope, blossoming into a shape-shifting and idiosyncratic force with a strong propensity for the epic. With this latest album, his first for Thrill Jockey, Richter reaches a darkly hallucinatory new plateau with his art. It is difficult to say whether Seven Horses For Seven Kings is Richter's masterpiece, as there is stiff competition from a couple of his other recent albums, but it is unquestionably his heaviest and most vividly absorbing opus to date, unfolding as a disorienting and harrowing nightmare that increasingly stretches and strains towards transcendence.

Thrill Jockey

Marc Richter certainly has a gift for properly setting the stage for a uniquely phantasmagoric experience, as "Asphodel Mansions" slurs and oozes into being as a squirming mass of sickly, deflated, and uncomfortably discordant horns.In fact, the early pieces on all evoke the feeling that I have just been drugged or fatally poisoned and that I used my last burst of strength to stumble into a cabaret before fading out of consciousness.As my life ebbs away, I can hear all of the expected sounds of a small jazz band, but they all take on a menacingly disjointed, distended, and hellish texture as the neon-lit room spins around me.Even the drums in "A Miracle No-Mother Child At Your Breast" are not safe from the infernal transformation, as they feel like they are happening at an extremely slowed time-scale in which a lively fill is reduced to a deep, hollow, and echoing caricature of itself.Richter also seems to draw inspiration from fundamentally uncomfortable and unpleasant sounds during that first phase of the album, as the crescendos are rife with artfully blurred and transformed homages to alarm clocks and car alarms.It is not until the third piece, "Lethe," that the veil of dissonant and undulating grotesquerie starts to dissipate, allowing the first hints of a more structured and deeper album to creep into the frame.At first, the shift towards more warm and melodic fare takes the shape of a smoky and serpentine saxophone over a hissing and throbbing backdrop of drones, but glimpses of considerably more detailed and harmonically rich vistas increasingly emerge as the album reaches its midpoint.In that regard, "Ten Tons of Rain in a Plastic Cup" feels like the doorway that frees me from the claustrophobic cacophony...and opens into somewhat more expansive and varied hellscape, as its swirling dissonance is gradually eclipsed by an ascending and darkly radiant progression of synth chords (albeit one gnawed by inhuman howls).

The following "Licking The Fig Tree" is the first unambiguously beautiful piece on the album, as a passionate eruption of free-jazz saxophone howls and squirms its way across a warm and lush landscape of deep organ chords. After that reverie, however, the bottom drops out and Seven Horses hits its lysergic, fragmented, and fitfully visceral crescendo.On the album's single (of sorts) "Fly On You," masses of shivering drones and strangled horns collide with booming and clattering percussion that sounds like massive, clanking machinery trying to replicate the sounds of a ping-pong game."If Not, Not" is even more unhinged, as it feels like a thunderous taiko drumming ensemble drifts in and out of phase beneath a chaos of guitar noise and dissonant synth tones…then gets joined by the cabaret chanteuse who was enigmatically absent from the album's first third.Normally, the appearance of a recognizable human voice would soften such a roiling miasma, but not this time, as the vocalist's phases grotesquely smear, warp, and intertwine into sinister incomprehensibility.The anachronistic Japanese war drums recur a few more times, most notably in "Semirechye" (courtesy of guest Jon Mueller), but the album's final stretch is primarily significant for featuring its most most gorgeous and swooningly hallucinatory pieces.The first of those is "Angel Investor," which is essentially just an immensely dense and oversaturated two-chord organ motif embellished with a vibrant nimbus of alternately howling and angelically warbling tones.In characteristic Richter fashion, however, the piece undergoes a brief rocky spell in which it violently warps like a collapsing star.Even heaven itself is precarious in the context of this album.

The ominously titled final piece ("The Courtesan Jigokudayū Sees Herself as a Skeleton in the Mirror of Hell") is the most lovely of all though, as its squirming and ghostlike loops recall Richter’s Jemh Circs project (repurposed YouTube samples) at its most achingly sublime.That title also sheds some light on one of Richter's probable inspirations for the album, as it references a hauntingly macabre Yoshitoshi woodblock print, which itself references the much older Japanese/Buddhist tale of "The Hell Courtesan."Though it has taken several different forms and tones since it first appeared, it is ultimately a tale of enlightenment and redemption, themes that Richter seems to have a deep interest in (samples of evangelists are a recent recurring theme in his work and "The Deseret Alphabet" references the Mormons' doomed attempt to create a new alphabet).I would hesitate to call Black to Comm "religious" though, even if if it occasionally approaches the ecstatic.It seems more accurate to say that Richter is fascinated and inspired by the myriad ways in which people wrestle with meaning and the condition of being human.That said, it would not surprise me at all if Seven Horses was intended as a deeply abstract reenvisioning of Jigokudayū’s story, as it definitely feels like an album that valiantly strains to pour a lifetime of anguish, lust, doubt, and transfiguration into two slabs of vinyl.I am not sure such a quixotic feat is entirely possible, but Richter's efforts certainly make a powerful impression regardless of his intentions or inspirations.While both Black to Comm and Alphabet 1968 have their share of compositional wonders that rival Seven Horses’ strongest moments, this album is nevertheless on a plane all its own in terms of distinctiveness, execution, and boldness of vision.